God or “Son of God”?
Who the Messiah Is
One of the most interesting parts of these early records of Jesus’s ministry, and particularly of John’s Gospel, is the strength of the opposition to Jesus. When Jesus taught about who he was, people reacted strongly. Many of his contemporaries not only rejected his teaching, they rejected it violently. It is ironic that so many books these days will refer to Jesus kindly. One calls him a model chief executive officer. Another calls him a reflection of God. John Meier has called him an “insufferably ordinary” Galilean layman.1 But many of those who actually knew Jesus, who walked with him and heard him teach, did not perceive him as an ordinary layman, a model businessman, or a mere reflection of God’s character. They hated him.
John describes many people as being defensive and skeptical from the beginning of Jesus’s ministry. They took offense at him (John 2:12–25; 6:61). They grumbled at his provision of bread (John 6:41, 61), like the Israelites who grumbled about the Lord’s provision of manna in the wilderness. A number of Jesus’s disciples abandoned him (John 6:66). His own brothers did not believe in him (John 7:5). Some people called him a liar (John 7:12, 47). Others said he was a foreigner fraudulently posing as Jewish (John 8:48), or that he was demon possessed (John 7:20; John 8:48, 52; John 10:20), or that he was raving mad (John 10:20). They repeatedly attempted to seize and arrest him (John 7:30–32, 44; John 8:20) and even to stone him (John 8:59; 11:8). They plotted to take his life (John 11:53, 57). They harassed his disciples (John 9:22; 12:42; 16:2). They even sought to kill Lazarus after Jesus raised him from the dead (John 12:10–11)! Finally, of course, Jesus was betrayed, arrested, bound, deserted, denied, interrogated, struck, flogged, mocked, crowned with thorns, made the center of what amounted to a lynching, and was crucified, causing him to suffocate to death. Mildly previewing the response many had to Jesus, John introduces his book by writing, “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him” (John 1:11).
The Message of the New Testament
Mark Dever
Mark Dever surveys the historical context, organization, and theology of each New Testament book, in light of God’s Old Testament promises. Dever’s message echoes that of the New Testament—one of fulfilled hope.
As I have reflected on this Gospel, one thing is so obvious it is easy to miss. If you want to know who Jesus is, consider one indisputable clue: the strength of the opposition Jesus received when he talked about who he is. The fate that every historian agrees befell Jesus and the fate that every local church remembers in the practice of the Lord’s Supper—violent rejection and crucifixion—suggests that something was going on that we would not expect surrounding a Galilean layman who had “no power base,” as Meier argues, nor surrounding one who was merely a pedestrian, itinerate sage. He was making some kind of claim that proved inflammatory among the people of his day and, no doubt, does the same within our own culture’s pluralistic belief in the equality of all religions. In short, the ire that accrues around Jesus in John’s Gospel appears to result from how he described his relationship with God: he presented himself as the unique Son of God.
From the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus was surrounded by individuals who recognized his unique status. John the Baptist (not the author of the Gospel) witnessed the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus and then said, “I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God” (John 1:34). When Nathanael first met Jesus, he was surprised by Jesus’s intimate knowledge of him and stated, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God” (John 1:49).
Jesus himself said to Nicodemus in the famed John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Clearly, Jesus perceived his sonship as unique; he was the “one and only Son.” And he perceived himself as specially given, or sent, by God: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:17).
I once had a conversation about Jesus with a follower of the Hare Krishna religion in front of a department store in England. He tried to assure me that he believed Jesus was “god” like I did. I said, “I believe that Jesus of Nazareth is actually God.” He looked relieved and said, “Well, I believe that too.” I responded, “No, you believe Jesus is god in a Hindu, monistic way. You think that everything is part of god, and I don’t believe that at all. I believe that Jesus taught that he was God in an utterly unique sense, and that he was right. He was the big one, the capital “G” God. He came to earth and took on flesh in a unique one-time-only way.” Well, that is an idea that seems very strange today, but it is what Jesus himself taught.
To a number of his countrymen, Jesus said,
I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself. (John 5:25–26)
The Father has life in himself, Jesus said, which means that no one gives him life and that his life is entirely self-sufficient. And then Jesus said the Father “grants” the Son life, which makes it sound as if the Son’s life is not self-sufficient. But then we notice Jesus said the Father grants the Son “life in himself,” like the Father! How the son is granted life in himself is a remarkable mystery to us. But this special reciprocal arrangement of equality between Father and Son is at the very heart of Jesus’s self-understanding. The Father glorifies the Son and the Son glorifies the Father in a way that is absolutely unique. Look at the way Jesus began His prayer in John 17: “Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you” (John 17:1).
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Jesus’s contemporaries clearly understood he was claiming to have this kind of special relationship with God, a claim considered heretical, blasphemous, and dangerous by the Jews. In John 19, Pilate, a nervous Roman official, examined Jesus and then tried to dismiss the seriousness of the charges brought against him. In response, “The Jews insisted, ‘We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God’” (John 19:7).
Now maybe you want to read John’s Gospel for your own reasons, and maybe you want to read that phrase “Son of God” as an enlightened way of saying we are all sons and daughters of God. You can do that. We live in a free country. But you must understand this was not how Jesus meant it, nor is this how his contemporaries took it. You can live in your own constructed world that makes you feel comfortable, but should you decide to investigate honestly the facts, you will find that Jesus spoke of himself as the Son of God in an utterly unique way, and that his contemporaries understood this very clearly.
This is why John places “the Son of God” appositionally to “Christ” in John 20:31: “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
Do not misunderstand this “sonship” kind of language. Jesus did not use this language to mean he is secondary to, or created by, the Father. He used it in the opposite way—to associate himself with God in his very nature, as if to say, “I am of the same essence, of the same stuff, as God.” We see this particularly in the famous “I am” sayings of John’s Gospel: “I am the true vine” (John 15:1, 5), “I am the good shepherd” (John 10:11, 14), “I am the gate” (John 10:7, 9), “I am the way” (John 14:6) and so forth. All of these would have prompted the Hebrew mind to recall Yahweh’s words to Moses by the burning bush: “I am who I am” (Ex. 3:14). And notice what Jesus said at the end of one heated exchange: “‘I tell you the truth,’ Jesus answered, ‘before Abraham was born, I am!’” (John 8:58). The people who heard him knew exactly what he was saying. You can tell by their response: “At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds” (John 8:59). Even if higher critics in today’s academy or our Muslim friends deny it, we can hear what those pious Jews heard at the time: Jesus was claiming to be God. He was claiming to be the same one who revealed himself to the Old Testament Israelites as “I am.”
The Father glorifies the Son and the Son glorifies the Father in a way that is absolutely unique.
Jesus, in this tenaciously monotheistic culture that haltingly but doggedly withstood the siren call of Roman and Greek polytheism, was claiming to be the equal of God! Now, our own culture is increasingly saturated with mystical Eastern thought, and Jesus’s claim to be the equal of God may seem less and less surprising since we have higher and higher thoughts of ourselves (as we understand ourselves, I think, less and less). But Jesus was brought up in a culture that understood many truths our culture does not understand, and one of those truths is the great distinction between God, the Creator of the universe, and ourselves, creatures in this universe. It was in the context of such a culture that Jesus claimed to be equal with God. Consider his statement and the people’s response in chapter 5: Jesus said to them,
“My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. (John 5:17–18).
A similar exchange occurs in chapter 10:
“I and the Father are one.”
Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them,
“I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?” >“We are not stoning you for any of these,” replied the Jews, “but for blasphemy because you, a mere man, claim to be God.” (John 10:30–33)
Jesus issued no denial of this accusation.
In fact, Jesus later reinforced the point privately with his disciples. Thomas asked where he was going, and Jesus replied
I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. (John 14:6–7)
The disciple Philip, not getting it, spoke up
“Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Jesus answered, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” (John 14:8–9).
Because Jesus is God, John can unabashedly record the worship of Jesus as God. A blind man whom Jesus healed worshiped him (John 9:38), as did Thomas, who formerly doubted: “‘My Lord and my God!’” (John 20:28). And Jesus accepted these acts of worship.
The disciple Andrew proclaimed early in the Gospel, “‘We have found the Messiah’ (that is, the Christ)” (John 1:41). And John says who this Messiah is through Nathaniel only a few verses later: “‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God’” (John 1:49). Of course, John had said as much already, in the very first verse of his Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).
Why We Should Believe
“But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).
Why does John say we should believe that Jesus is the Christ? Again, John tells us, “These are written that you may believe . . .” What does the pronoun “these” in verse 31 refer to? It refers to the miraculous signs mentioned in verse 30. So to quickly answer our question, we should believe because of the miraculous signs John has written about that testify to the authenticity of everything he is saying.
Notes:
- John Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 3 vols., Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 1991), I.350-352.
This article is adapted from The Message of the New Testament: Promises Kept by Mark Dever.
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